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So last week I ordered 3 pairs of shoes from Zappos. I intended to keep only one and maybe not even that one. They were set to get here Monday. Monday afternoon I got the notice they were delivered. So they actually should have gotten up here via the Timber Ridge delivery people yesterday but no. This morning I managed to get access to the package room (no easy feat) and discovered they where not there...

Then I looked at Zappos details and it says they were delivered to Seattle. Yep. To my old condo address which was way weird because earlier in the month I ordered from Zappos, the exact same way and the shoes came here. But anyway. Issue.

So I called the condo office and a guy named Calvin answered. Christian (my friend who lives there) had told me that Jathan, the idiot donothing manager we used to have had been replaced by a really good guy and boy, was he right. Calvin dug through the package locker and then offered to go upstairs and see if they were outside the unit door and he did. While I was on the phone! No packages, tho.

I texted Paul - they guy who bought the unit for rental - and explained the problem and asked how to get in touch with his renter.

Then I got Zappos chat and pled my case. She immediately refunded all my money and got a new order started for me!! I placed the reorder with the correct address. And then...

I got a text from Paul that his nephew now lives in the unit and 'I meant to text you yesterday that he got the packages. What should we do with them?'

Whew and ach...

So I told Paul to leave them outside Christian's door (2 doors down from Paul, actually) and sent a text to Christian asking him to bring him next time he's coming this way.

Then, it was back to Zappos chat... could you please cancel my order and unfund my refund. Amazingly, I got the same customer service rep!! That saved a lot of background explanation. But, all is fixed. And whew and yeah.

I did double check and while Zappos has a 60 day return policy, it looks like more than 60 days works, too. So if Christian doesn't get here soon then we can pick them up on the 19th when we got to the Mariners game.

So yesterday morning, I got a wild hair to go to Costco. It was after 10 so the crowds were already there and it was the hottest day of the year, so far, with the sun blazing. WTF was I even thinking??? I got what I wanted at Costco and only one thing I didn't. Costco recently made a change to their system that makes me so happy. They've always had tight controls and weird restrictions on their credit card use. They opened it up a few years ago so that you could use Visa but you could only load their visa onto the app so when you went to check out, you had to have their card (or phone app) and your own Visa card (or phone wallet). That always annoyed the heck out of me. Last month they changed it so that you can load your own Visa card into their app. So now, I can walk up to the checkout, beep my phone one lousy time and then beep all my stuff, get my receipt and I'm done. It's a very silly thing that I just love.

I got some Kevins Korean Beef which I've always wanted to try. I tried it for dinner last night. Nope. It's not horrible but it's sure not calorie worthy.

And I went to Michaels. I couldn't find exactly what I wanted but I found something close. (Sock yarn) and went to check out. I hate using a person to check out at Michaels. Same reason I never liked Joanne's. You can save a bundle if you wade through their complicated coupon/app/specials spider web but it's painful. Or you can pay full price and feel like you got cheated. This is not a good system. The Michaels checkout clerk ask you in 4,999 different ways if you have coupons/app/wanna join their cult/wanna donate to whatthefuckever. I mean it's easier to get though customs. But now they have these giant self checkout kiosks. Which I had totally forgotten, rarely work if you want to charge it via your phone. I tried 3 times to pay full price for this $8 skein of yarn and it wouldn't work. I dropped the skein there and mentioned fornicating a few times and left the store. I think the last time I was in Michaels, I said Never Again. This time I am documenting in hopes that I remember. I'd much rather shop to Jesus music at Hobby Lobby.

So then because it was hot and the Sun was glaring and I was pissed off and I had frozen food in the car unprotected from the heat, I decided to go to the yarn shop where they have high priced yarns. I can never find the damn place. It's in a quaint but damn inconvenient shopping 'hood that is perfect if you are a tourist meandering from shop to shop, but a bitch in a half if you just want to run in and get something. Did I mention it was hot? I finally found the place (it's a bunch of little cottage things that all face different directions) and then had to get over massive sticker shock. They were having some kind of class so no one was available to help and, when I finally decided on something, no one was available to take my money. It was not a lovely experience and it was really hot.

I took my skein and my frozen foods and came home where my attitude went to chill when I walked in the door. And then it was helped when shortly thereafter, my house got cleaned.

Oh here's some major cult news. My next door neighbor is Ingrid. She is a hateful, ridiculous, unpleasant person who once, at elbow coffee, banged her hand on the table while yelling at and about me, that it required a trip to urgent care and was in a sling for a couple of weeks. She's a 'gluten free' who uses it as much of a political statement as a food restriction. She also has a wide variety of ailments, most of which, I strongly suspect, are imaginary. She was given two months to live ... in 2023. She rarely comes to elbow coffee any more so I don't often see her. When we do pass each other, I make a point of saying hello and she sometimes replies with her own hello but often just ignores me.

ANYWAY. Today is her birthday. And Bonny is in charge of birthdays so she asked me to make a poster to put in the elbow. We did this for John last month and it was a hit. It's a pretty heavy lift on my end. I open up a Google doc and open up Gemini and tell it what I want. Tweak maybe, maybe not. Save as PDF and send it to the front desk for printing. It's birthday science. Ingrid was easy. She has two cats that are white and fluffy and her apartment is full to the brim with ornate dark wooded furniture way too big for the space and every nook and cranny is stuffed with tchotchkes. Ingrid Birthday Victorian 2 fluffy white cats. Gemini got it in one.

Yesterday, Ingrid was leaving as I was coming back and I said 'hello' and she looked me in the eye and said "Thank you for the birthday poster. That was very appropriate."

Pigs must have been flying somewhere.

Today I might pop over to Trader Joe's but I also might not. The temperature has plummeted to a lovely 64 so going out isn't totally unreasonable so it could go either way. The baseball game is at 1 today so I'll be here. The Mariners are on a bit of a winning streak but I think it might get snapped this afternoon.

And because I don't have enough project started, I started knitting a pair of socks with that way too expensive yarn (which, by the way, is a lot less fun to knit with than my usual cheap shit - that's going to save me some $$ in the future). I present, The Toes:

My mother had a younger brother who married young and then went to France for World War II and got killed. His wife remarried changed her last name and had a life. Over the years, as the eldest remaining relative that they can find, I've been contacted by veterans organizations asking this or that about Billy. It happened again yesterday. I don't know what made me answer the phone call but I did and a very nice old guy asked me to confirm some info they had about him. I did. And that was that. He was long dead before I was born and my Mom was not one to wax on about dead (or even alive ones, really) relatives. So my knowledge bank account about this guy is pretty lean. But mainly I wonder about a project that would have people calling people like me about people like him. Weird.

My mother also married a guy who was killed in World War II but I don't know where exactly. He was an only child. We used to go visit his parents when I was little. They lived in Oklahoma. They were a hundred years old then (it sure seemed to me) but had a great porch swing. I never get calls about him.

Yesterday afternoon Biggie was sleeping beside me on the couch. He was snoring loudly. And then, all of a sudden, he jumped up and RAN to the glass door. It was a second or so before I saw the reason. A nice big old fat bird was out on the terrace. Not one of those silly humming birds but a proper fat bird. He stayed out there for a long time. Hopping on the railing flying around. Biggie was on duty - sending stink eye signals the whole time and for some time after he left. That boy does love his birds. And that bird was sure lucky there was a door.

Today is water aerobics. And I slept late. So when I did wake up, I shot out of bed, into my swimsuit and managed to get in a lovely swim with time to spare.

I got an email this morning from Experian that my credit score had dropped. I checked Chase and BECU and while the scores are not the same, they are both fine 850+. So I went to Experian and clicked on log in. They wanted a password, then the answer to a question, then a pin number, then a secret code, but they never sent the text and I figured the next requirement was a blood sample so I just said fuck it. The only thing I buy these days that considers my credit score is insurance. All I got is car and I just paid it so fuck 'em. I actually should buy some renters insurance but I keep putting it off and one day I'll be dead and it won't matter.

I ordered 3 pairs of shoes from Zappos. They are downstairs in the package room and will be brought up here later this afternoon. I will keep one pair maybe or maybe none.

I have a collection of puzzle games on my phone. Each has a daily puzzle and I have become a slave to them all. Yesterday was the first day of the month and I got all of them done and even added one. About once a week some publication or another publishes an article that says that puzzles keep the brains of old people sharp. I figure if I can do a perfect month with each of these puzzles, my brain will be able to cut tomatoes. Now, wouldn't that be handy?! Of course, our tomatoes, here in the Northwest pretty much always suck so actually not that big a deal.

Today is also house cleaning day. But that's not til later. I have knitting and crochet to do and a good book to listen to and a ballgame tonight.

Julio is the perfect picture when he's sleeping.